Iraq's Shias

Whodunnit in the hawza

The attempted assassination of a Shia prelate

IT WAS not a big explosion, compared with the bloodier blasts that recently wrecked the Jordanian embassy and the UN offices in Baghdad. But the bomb that targeted a top cleric in the Shia holy city of Najaf on August 24th, killing three of his guards, represented another abrupt widening of the cycle of violence engulfing Iraq.

The culprits and the motives behind all three attacks remain mysterious, as does the linkage between them. But the overall message is clear. Iraq's many-headed “resistance” is out to punish anyone seeking to stabilise Iraq, either by working with the coalition forces, or simply by declaring that these forces are needed, if only for the time being.

The intended victim of the latest attack, Muhammad Said al-Hakim, falls into the latter category. He is one of four senior ayatollahs who lead the hawza, or seminary, in Najaf, which is rivalled only by Iran's Qom as a centre of Shia jurisprudence. Ranking second to Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Mr Hakim is doubly respected for having survived eight years in Saddam Hussein's prisons, and having lost 17 close relatives to his executioners. His word, in the eyes of devout followers, is tantamount to law.

Since the invasion of Iraq, both he and Mr Sistani have counselled patience and tolerance, often in the face of sniping from younger, hotter heads inside the hawza. So far the elders have prevailed, helping to secure relative calm across the Shia-dominated south of the country. Internal tensions have grown, however, driven partly by the rabble-rousing of Muqtada al-Sadr, the 30-year-old scion of a clerical family who has preached—but so far not practised—armed action against the occupation as a prelude to Islamist revolution.

Some Shias have blamed Mr Sadr for a spate of attacks against rival clerics, despite his heated denials. Others see the hand of hardliners connected to Iran's shadowy intelligence services, whose aim is not only to bleed the American occupiers by fomenting chaos, but also to eliminate clerics, such as Mr Hakim, who challenge the validity of Iranian-style theocracy. Iraq's porous borders have allowed thousands of Iranian pilgrims easy access to Najaf, adding to widespread suspicions in the city.

A more popular theory is that non-Shia actors are to blame, whether they are Baathist agents or Sunni Muslim extremists, possibly tied to international terrorist groups. If this is the case, the attack on the ayatollah would seem to be part of a calculated, systematic strategy to render the country ungovernable.